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Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

nytimes.com

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Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#391

Post by Paradigma11 »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #254
gutnor wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much research did you do into all the fiscal decisions of the country you live in ? Are you even qualified enough to interpret the result at all ?It seems to me you are asking from the average Joe Greek more than professional actually did. Also "Greece" is not a single entity. Making Greece pay does not mean making the people that created the debt pay - it means taking the available money and you should know that…

Agreed, the people who mismanaged and/or stole the money in previous years are GONE. Why punish the average Joe in Greece? What will it achieve?

The problem is that it the average Joes in Greece also paid no taxes, got fake disability benefits.....

Typically a system works okish if only the people at the top skim, because they are rather few. If the rest starts showing the same behaviour, that's when the system crashes.

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#392

Post by Paradigma11 »

dageshi wrote: post #4

Effectively a vote of confidence in the greek government. If they do decide to leave the euro then they now have the political cover for it.

Why dont the greek people show a vote of confidence by keeping their money in their banks. That would be somewhat more relevant.

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#393

Post by jeffdavis »

littletimmy wrote: post #314

What's most interesting to me in this entire crisis is the moral discourse surrounding debt. More often than not, you'll hear stuff like: "Of course Greece must pay its debt", "You mean to say you can just take money and not pay?", "Why should taxpayers bail Greece out?"... All the while, there is absolute ZERO condemnation for banking entities making risky loans. There is not even a tacit nod towards acknowledging t…

I thought default was always considered an option for Greece. The way I understood it, a "bailout" was a plan to give Greece a bunch of money so they could avoid default. Please correct me where I'm wrong.

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#394

Post by jessedhillon »

wyager wrote: post #112
jessedhillon wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For every New Yorker I ask "Would you like Texas to govern New York?" I get another who is determined that New York should be able to dictate policy in Texas. Is that really the same thing? For certain economies, the impacts of state-level decisions have federal ramifications. California can remain relatively autonomous when making decisions about how best to regulate an information economy, but I do think that Cal…

I honestly can't understand your argument; you're saying that for some reason, places with information economies should have legal power over places with resource economies?

Not for just "some reason": for the reason that resource economies create environmental impacts which linger and are not restricted to geographic region. Were you honestly not able to make that inference by yourself?

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#395

Post by cmavr8 »

empressplay wrote: post #348
monk_e_boy wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, the people who mismanaged and/or stole the money in previous years are GONE. Why punish the average Joe in Greece? What will it achieve?

The point of democracy is that the people appoint representatives to act on their behalf -- as such, the public is indeed fully responsible for what their politicians do, like it or not, whether an individual voted for them or not. There is no abdication of responsibility in a democracy and the Greeks should know that better than anyone.

The law that regulates elections in Greece is flawed (IMO). It assigns the percentages of small parties to the first one, to help it achieve majority in Parliament and be able to govern. This may sound wise, but motivates mainstream parties to not cooperate with smaller ones, and keeps minorities out of parliament.

AFAIK there are countries (NL?) that traditionally could not elect self-contained governments so parties were forced to cooperate with other, which in turn created politics of accommodation. I think this is healthier than blocking minorities out of parliament.

Syriza got elected with 36.3% back in January, while ~64% of Greeks voted.

Also, what happens if a voter agrees with none of the choices (parties)? Is he responsible for what their government does? (Legally yes, that's democracy, but ethically he should be given the right to object)

Oh, let's not forget that Greeks leaving outside Greece (some say we're another 10mil out here) were not given the chance to vote neither in the elections or referendum. We had to travel back to do so...

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#396

Post by littletimmy »

Lazare wrote: post #330
littletimmy wrote: post #314

What's most interesting to me in this entire crisis is the moral discourse surrounding debt. More often than not, you'll hear stuff like: "Of course Greece must pay its debt", "You mean to say you can just take money and not pay?", "Why should taxpayers bail Greece out?"... All the while, there is absolute ZERO condemnation for banking entities making risky loans. There is not even a tacit nod towards acknowledging t…

> All the while, there is absolute ZERO condemnation for banking entities making risky loans. There is not even a tacit nod towards acknowledging that if banks make loans that fail, it is their loss to eat. Not sure you really understand the situation. Everything which you said "isn't happening" already happened. There was already a massive haircut on privately held Greek debt (but not the publicly held greek debt),…

No, I think you are being too charitable to banks here. Just answer this: where did the bailout money go? Who has it now? Describe to me the flow of money and you'll see that it went to service debt that was held in large part by private institutions.

Even if I agree with your argument, I guess what we should say is that the haircut wasn't enough. The lenders should have lost all their money because they debtors are insolvent. There was no reason to involve taxpayer money in this mess.

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#397

Post by CamperBob2 »

brightball wrote: post #344
CamperBob2 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cognitive dissonance is maddening. It's a little more complicated than simply accusing the other party of cognitive dissonance. There actually is a right answer and a wrong answer to some of these questions. K-12 education, for instance, has no business being a state-level issue. It is grossly unfair if a kid in New York learns about evolution while her cousin in Texas learns that Jesus rode a dinosaur to work. (…

Are public schools in Texas really teaching anybody that Jesus rode a dinosaur to work...? For what it's worth, I grew up in South Carolina, went to a Christian school up through 5th grade and grew up in a Southern Baptist Church. At no point during any of this did anybody try to convince me that the world was 10,000 years old. We learned dinosaurs lived 65 million years ago. We learned everything we needed to learn.…

Are public schools in Texas really teaching anybody that Jesus rode a dinosaur to work...?

Yes, pretty much. See http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/education/creationists-on-... and plenty of other articles. The National Center for Science Education (http://www.ncse.com) is a good place to pick up further insights.

This scenario is a sufficient argument for placing K-12 education under Federal control, in my view. Local control makes absolutely no sense where teaching objective facts in a standardized curriculum is concerned.

For what it's worth, I grew up in South Carolina, went to a Christian school up through 5th grade and grew up in a Southern Baptist Church. At no point during any of this did anybody try to convince me that the world was 10,000 years old. We learned dinosaurs lived 65 million years ago.

At this point I'd say you're an exception, but I don't have access to the statistics I'd need to make the case. Most Christian denominations may not specifically encourage their followers to toe the "Intelligent Design" line, but among Southern Baptists, my experience is that they do. (Of course, the Earth was only 6,000 years old when I was a kid.)

This school brainwashing stuff that floats around the internet is a scare tactic at best and an isolated minority of people at worst who actually believe their children aren't going to have internet access one day. Most of the best schools in my area now spend more time focussing on teaching kids HOW to learn effectively and core life skills because there is an assumption that the bulk of the information is a few clicks away. Somebody teaches a kid a made up story, that kid is eventually going to have Google and question just about everything those people ever told him.

I'd like to agree with you (and did at one point) but the opposite seems to be happening. The rise of the Internet has disintermediated us from our teachers, so to speak. Every moron with an opinion and a Facebook account is an "authority" now.

This isn't just a right-wing phenomenon, either -- look at the childhood vaccination rates in places like Marin County. It's another example of something that should have gotten better, but instead has gotten worse. As you said elsewhere, it's not a partisan issue.

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#398

Post by wyager »

jessedhillon wrote: post #394
wyager wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly can't understand your argument; you're saying that for some reason, places with information economies should have legal power over places with resource economies?

Not for just "some reason": for the reason that resource economies create environmental impacts which linger and are not restricted to geographic region. Were you honestly not able to make that inference by yourself?

It sounds like you're just coming up with (half-assed) justifications for the moral superiority of information economies. Every globally integrated economy has geographically disparate effects; that doesn't tell us anything about who should have legal power over whom.

The logical conclusion of your argument is that a non-exporting, environmentally neutral area should, again for reasons that you have not made clear, have increased legal precedence over other areas.

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#399

Post by Lazare »

littletimmy wrote: post #396
Lazare wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All the while, there is absolute ZERO condemnation for banking entities making risky loans. There is not even a tacit nod towards acknowledging that if banks make loans that fail, it is their loss to eat. Not sure you really understand the situation. Everything which you said "isn't happening" already happened. There was already a massive haircut on privately held Greek debt (but not the publicly held greek debt),…

No, I think you are being too charitable to banks here. Just answer this: where did the bailout money go? Who has it now? Describe to me the flow of money and you'll see that it went to service debt that was held in large part by private institutions. Even if I agree with your argument, I guess what we should say is that the haircut wasn't enough. The lenders should have lost all their money because they debtors are…

The debt is held by public institutions, and what money Greece receives from those institutions is going overwhelmingly back to those institutions.

> The lenders should have lost all their money

"The lenders" are mostly the Troika, and always has been. You seem to be working on a mental model where most Greek debt in foreign hands is owned by private banks (or was owned by private banks, or was originally lent by private banks). Not so.

> There was no reason to involve taxpayer money in this mess.

Also untrue. A currency union ABSOLUTELY requires large fiscal transfers from richer to poorer regions, probably in the neighbourhood of 30% of GDP for a region like Europe. This has been known for decades. EU taxpayer money was on the hook from the moment the Euro project started. (If EU voters were never told that, that's a separate issue.)

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#400

Post by gutnor »

Paradigma11 wrote: post #391
monk_e_boy wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, the people who mismanaged and/or stole the money in previous years are GONE. Why punish the average Joe in Greece? What will it achieve?

The problem is that it the average Joes in Greece also paid no taxes, got fake disability benefits..... Typically a system works okish if only the people at the top skim, because they are rather few. If the rest starts showing the same behaviour, that's when the system crashes.

> Typically a system works okish if only the people at the top skim

That's not how that works though. People one level under the top will try to get their cut too, then the level under until you get to the bottom. The system is ok-ish if the overall level of corruption is somewhat reasonable. In the case of Greece, the amount of corruption at the bottom level is not the cause, but the symptom of the fucked up state all the way up.

Now, there is a difference between the top and bottom. The whole bottom level is creating a black economy. Not as good as a regular market, but something that self sustain itself. See Greece pre-euro.

The few people a top though are the one that forged the accounts of Greece and pushed the country in its death spiral.

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